Bmpanel2 theme reference

I’m working on the bmpanel2 theme reference. Actually there is a lot of information already. You can check it out there – http://nsf.110mb.com/bmpanel2themeref. But since my english sucks hard, I will appreciate any help. Simply contact me via email.

New bmpanel2 theme

It was actually submitted by the bmpanel2 user. Yep, I was surprised too that there are ones, since bmpanel2 wasn’t released yet. Maybe it’s not the best theme ever, but I certainly liked it.  So, here we go – noir theme (it’s already in the repository).

Bmpanel2 updates

Just a short summary of all past updates.

• Bmpanel2 reacts almost properly on the monitor resolution changes. Well there is an issue with _NET_WM_WORKSPACE, but it isn’t my fault, I guess wm-spec has some bad ideas in that area, so.. whatever. If you have just one panel on your desktop – everything will work.
• I took a look at xinerama/xrandr and as I thought – I will not implement those. Probably I will do a hack for multihead linux users doing exact placement (something like: –position=x,y,w,h). Maybe it will work for somebody.
• Bugs. I fix them as I discover them. There were few 🙂
• Colored text shadows. I did this to provide the MacOS-like text relief effect. You can see these shadows in the XSOcaM themes.

The work is progressing really slow.. That’s bad. 😦

It’s a lack of motivation.

Failed promise

Once I said: “No more art”. And that was a lie. 😀

I have finished a new bmpanel2 theme with one known operating system in mind. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome! XSOcaM themes!

I hope you like it.

(they will be in the repository sooner or later)

Art starvation.

I really need an artist! Bmpanel2 waits for its themes. If you’re that person – email me.

I’m ready to do everything what it’s required to make it beautiful.

Keep working

I’m just keep working on the bmpanel2. I did a simple screenshot illustrating my current focus. Few textual things for bmpanel2:

• The man page.
• The vim syntax file for themes (and bmpanel2rc).
• The “–list” command showing available themes on XDG paths and some additional info.

Well, I’m keep working and my english is keep sucking. 😉 If you wish to help me with the man page or with theme format description, just contact me via email.

Also it’s worth looking at “vertical_mode” branch. At this time I’m not ready to comment it a lot. All I can say that it’s not supported by me and probably never will be. But it’s an interesting idea/project/branch, even though I don’t like it much. 😀

No more composite

Sorry guys. But there will be no XComposite support in the bmpanel2. I spent few days investigating what should I do to make it work with system tray and I have realized few things.

1. System tray specification sucks. I don’t get it. What did you say? I should draw icon contents by myself using composite extension? But I thought that’s what composite manager should do… I mean.. WTF!?!?!?

2. The Composite extension is what happens when bells and whistles dominate over clear design. I hate the way it’s designed. It’s a big hack from its very beginning and no one actually cares. People asked for a cool desktop features on linux and they did XComposite. All programmers have to suffer now, but no one actually cares. OK, I don’t care too.

I choose clear design, usability and stability over bells and whistles. Well.. at least, as much as it is possible with X11.

After all what do you want : good software that is cute enough and really usable or a bunch of hacks tied together and pretending to be a software. And that’s not a question, since the answer is obvious.